\n\t\t\t\t\t\tPresident Donald Trump has regularly said that drug-price discounts on his watch are greater than 100%, which isn\u2019t mathematically possible. Now his health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is trying to back up his faulty math.This story was originally published on PolitiFact. Read it here.During an April 22 Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., questioned Kennedy about discounts available on the federally run TrumpRx website. She expressed doubt about Trump\u2019s past statements about price reductions up to 600%.Kennedy said, “President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. There\u2019s two ways of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.”In an Oval Office event the following day, Kennedy brought up the exchange with Warren and reiterated his statement.”If the drug was $100 and it raised the price to $600 that would be a 600% rise,” Kennedy said. “If it drops from $600 to $100, that’s a 600% savings. And the President used that mathematical device to illustrate the magnitude of the theft that has been happening against our country and our people.”But well-established mathematical principles have only one way to calculate percentage change, and neither Trump nor Kennedy did it correctly.In Kennedy\u2019s example to Warren during the Senate Finance Committee hearing, if a drug was reduced from $600 to $10, that would represent a 98.3% decrease, not a 600% decrease. Specifically, to calculate that percentage decrease, you would subtract $10 from $600 and divide the answer ($590) by the original price, $600. In Kennedy\u2019s case, $590 divided by $600 equals .983, or 98.3%.”It\u2019s mathematically impossible” for the reduction to be higher than 100% and for the consumer to still have to pay something, said Maryclare Griffin, associate professor in the University of Massachusetts-Amherst\u2019s mathematics and statistics department.The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to an inquiry for this article.Trump has made similar claims before \u2014 citing decreases as high as 1,000% \u2014 but price cuts this large are not mathematically possible.In August, when The Associated Press fact-checked an earlier instance of Trump making a similar statement, the White House did not explain or justify the underlying math. At the time, White House spokesman Kush Desai said, “It\u2019s an objective fact that Americans are paying exponentially more for the same exact drugs as people in other developed countries pay, and it\u2019s an objective fact that no other Administration has done more to rectify this unfair burden for the American people.”A 100% reduction would mean that a consumer pays nothing for a medication.A 200% reduction would mean the pharmaceutical company pays the consumer the full price of the medicine. A 400% reduction would mean the company pays the consumer three times the price of the medicine. A 500% cut would bring the consumer four times the price, and a 600% cut would give the consumer five times the price to accept the medicine. Any of these decreases are unrealistic.”There\u2019s no other way to calculate percentage change, and Trump’s way is not a valid way,” said Brooke Nichols, a mathematical modeler and health economist at Boston University\u2019s School of Public Health. “The maximum amount a price can decrease is by 100%. It’s possible to increase a price by 600%, but it doesn’t work the other way around.”Our rulingKennedy said, “There’s two ways of calculating percentage” decreases. “If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.”That\u2019s not how percentage decreases work. For anything higher than a 100% decrease in price, the seller would be paying the customer to possess the drug.In Kennedy\u2019s example to Warren, a $590 reduction in the price of a $600 drug would represent a 98.3% decrease, not a 600% decrease. PolitiFact Staff Writer Grace Abels contributed to this report.\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump has regularly said that drug-price discounts on his watch are greater than 100%, which isn\u2019t mathematically possible. Now his health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is trying to back up his faulty math.<\/p>\n
This story was originally published on PolitiFact. Read it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n During an April 22 Senate Finance Committee hearing<\/a>, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., questioned Kennedy about discounts available on the federally run TrumpRx website<\/a>. She expressed doubt about Trump\u2019s past statements about price reductions up to 600%.<\/p>\n Kennedy said<\/a>, “President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. There\u2019s two ways of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.”<\/p>\n In an Oval Office event the following day, Kennedy brought up the exchange with Warren and reiterated his statement.<\/p>\n “If the drug was $100 and it raised the price to $600 that would be a 600% rise,” Kennedy said<\/a>. “If it drops from $600 to $100, that’s a 600% savings. And the President used that mathematical device to illustrate the magnitude of the theft that has been happening against our country and our people.”<\/p>\n But well-established mathematical principles have only one way to calculate percentage change, and neither Trump nor Kennedy did it correctly.<\/p>\n In Kennedy\u2019s example to Warren during the Senate Finance Committee hearing, if a drug was reduced from $600 to $10, that would represent a 98.3% decrease, not a 600% decrease. Specifically, to calculate that percentage decrease, you would subtract $10 from $600 and divide the answer ($590) by the original price, $600. In Kennedy\u2019s case, $590 divided by $600 equals .983, or 98.3%.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s mathematically impossible” for the reduction to be higher than 100% and for the consumer to still have to pay something, said Maryclare Griffin, associate professor in the University of Massachusetts-Amherst\u2019s mathematics and statistics department.<\/p>\n The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to an inquiry for this article.<\/p>\n Trump has made<\/a> similar claims before \u2014 citing<\/a> decreases as high as 1,000% \u2014 but price cuts this large are not mathematically possible<\/a>.<\/p>\n